DENIZEN OF THE NET

At some point, most networks sink under their own complexity. Any personal computer user will know how hard it is to keep track of all the information on his hard disk, and to remember how to make his word processor, spreadsheet and other software work together. With networks, that complexity grows exponentially. Two technologies that can help tame the mess are “objects” and “agents”.

An object, or object-oriented software, to use the full name, is information that knows what can be done with itself. To edit a conventional electronic document, for example, a person must find the appropriate word processor, start up and set to work. But with an object, the person sends the object a message to find its own word processor, start it up and get ready to be edited.

This may not sound like much, but amid the complexity of large networks and compound documents (which contain, say, spreadsheets which must be updated as well as to be edited) even a little help can enable people to do a lot more work. So all of the big computer companies including Microsoft, Apple, and IBM are working on the standards that will enable objects to communicate with each other in simple ways to help tame networks.

One of the more ambitious applications of objects comes from Lloyd’s of London, an international insurance market. The forms that need to be filled out to buy or

sell insurance are nightmare. They must cover highly specialized risks ranging

from a sinking boat to burning building, and they must meet different regulations in just about every market they are sold in. About third are typically filled in wrong. So Lloyd’s staff is working to build objects that can automatically check to see that the right information has been entered for whatever risk is being insured.

Agents are objects that don’t wait to be told what to do. They have their own goals, and wander about networks, hopping from machine, working on behalf of their masters, who are off doing other jobs.

One exemplary agent is being created by John Evans of News Data Corporation, part of the News Corp. empire. Mr. Evans hopes eventually to sell an agent, named Oliver after his dog. This intelligent agent knows enough about travel and travel databases to retrieve automatically, for example, a list of all flights from London to San Francisco on July 31^st – so doing the simplest, and most time-consuming part of the job that a human travel agent does.

TEXT C

Read text C without consulting a dictionary. Be ready to answer the following questions:

1. What is the Internet?

2. Why is the Internet expanding so fast?

3. What three types of connection should be mentioned while speaking about the Internet?

4. What is the purpose of the Internet? Give examples.

5. What was the Internet invented for and by whom?

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